self-deportation and generalized oppression in Alabama

Alabama lawmakers may have done better had they consulted the work of the late sociologist, Robert K. Merton, before enacting recent law against undocumented workers and their families. Specifically, Merton emphasized the fact that intentional change often carries latent dysfunctional consequences, i.e., serious, unintended, undesirable outcomes. The law was supposed to make life so difficult for immigrants without papers that they would simply leave the state. However, as Jack Hitt explains in Alien Experiment, Act One of this This American Life episode, it has made living and working in Alabama far more difficult for many others, in addition to those initially targeted.